Child widget empty state (🎨 Design)

Goal

How might we educate users on the purpose of the Child widget and how to utilize it?

Link to actionable insight:

Gitlab: tree or link widgets need clear calls to action or empty states

🔬 Recap

• The purpose of or value provided by the relationship/link/tree widgets within GitLab is not clear at first glance. There is no education to support users on what they can expect to do here.
• There is no clear call to action guiding users on what task to perform first in order to start using these widgets.
• There is no empty state of these widgets, causing them to be not as discoverable as possible.
• The counts, buttons, etc within the widgets lack context due to no empty state or clear call to action.

Proposal

• Add a light empty state within the widget to guide users on what step to take to start populating child items.
• An illustration could be optional
• Copy is TBD
• A count of existing child items can also be included within the child widget header

Collapsed child widget	Expanded child widget with empty state	Expanded child widget with empty state + child counter in header
Child widget can potentially be collapsed	Child widget empty state	Child widget empty state with a counter in the header to display how many child items are included